"On live, PvP Power grants 0% healing to Balance, Feral, Windwalker, Retribution, Shadow, Enhancement and Elemental. In the next 5.2 build, this number will be 25% (or half of what a healing spec gets). We agree that PvP healing feels too weak for these hybrid classes. We also don't think Shadow really needs this buff, so we will likely offset it in other ways."

Imo the issue right now is that the only healer we can play with is a hpala and then we need to get a fear class DPS (shadow or lock) for CC chain. And for those combs we will lose our spot to mages.
Now in 5.2 where we can get fears from disc it will allow us to play with a sheep DR class.

Ive been playing the ptr a bit, Ele is looking reallllly good. Dmg is quite high, offheals are great and ur survivability is pretty good. We are still weak vs rogues though and i can still see some problems with them locking us down. Aside from rogues i dont see too much issue with our survivability, utility and dmg next season,

Lava burst will always crit now but will do less dmg + shamanistic rage.. elemental shamans looking good

We are changing the way Lava Burst interacts with Flame Shock. Currently, Flame Shock is required for Lava Burst to crit. This is cool rotationally but creates problems where Flame Shock dispels or swapping targets is a massive nerf to Elemental, dropping their 2.5 multiplier on Lava Burst to a 1.0. We are going to nerf Lava Burst damage, cause it to always crit (like Chaos Bolt), and then cause it to do say 50% more damage to targets afflicted by Flame Shock. The net result should be that LB + FS is still the best DPS, but failing to do so will be a 1.5 to 1.0 drop instead of a 2.5 to 1.0 drop.

ive played ele (as well as resto) every expansion to a high level of success, through all the ups and downs and never has ele felt as poorly designed as it does now.

been playing ele on my shaman for funsies, the extent of outplaying necessary to kill even the weakest of opposition is absurd. I hate this lightning shield mechanic introduced in cata, i hate the fact that my damage is based around complete RNG. This is to the extent that i can either global an enemy player or hit them for no more than 35% of their health in 10 seconds.

This spec will remain dead as long as lightning shield isnt providing a %mitigation equal to that of moonkins/shadowpriest. In addition to this healing on self should be increased x% while lightning shield is active. Even if you kite and survive your only option is to cross your fingers and spam damage, as even casting 8 heals in a row will not top you. (why remove Gheal from ele, but keep chain heal???? HELLO TOM?!?!)

^^^^^ Perhaps remove chain heal from ele, replace it with gheal. When clearcasting is active, reduce the cast time of gheal from 2.5 or 3 w/e it is baseline outside of resto cast reduction, to 1.5 seconds for ele. that way some semblance of healing could be done to support not only yourself but your team....

I think they need to trash all these RNG procs along with fulmination (which they will never remove RIP watershield), increase damage by X% on lightning bolt especially, as well as lava burst (smaller percentage obviously) in addition to increasing self healing, while not increasing healing to others. Even in cata i could hold my own in most 1v2 and 1v1 situations, by kiting and keeping myself up and wearing the enemy down. =]

The arena situation is much more dire... Mana feels good, damage is kind of low but thats a result of high potential via RNG (remove rng procs, raise sustained via casting reward casting!!!), utility is of course always strong for shamans, but survivability is just trashhhhhhh.... you are so worried about dying most of the time you cant really do more than just purging nonstop.

however, with simple survivability patch ups this spec may be able to compete outside of 1-2% of people having success. The mechanics such as purge, windshear, tremor, grounding etc are enough to make the spec viable if only it could survive for more than 1 minute.

I am not convinced that the addition of sham rage is enough. Ele shamans are a healers worst nightmare, 10x worse to heal than an affliction warlock even.... (ally pov) Try doing high rated rbgs as ele ;( its almost laughable how quickly you can die even with shift up